Paterson teacher files harassment complaint against vice principal

PATERSON — A teacher at School 6 filed a criminal harassment complaint against a vice principal on Monday, an action that some parents and educators say reflects broader problems stemming from recent efforts to improve one of the state's worst-performing schools.

In the complaint filed in Paterson Municipal Court, the teacher, Myesha McMillan, accused Vice Principal Tyisha Bennett of invading her personal space, causing her to “feel threatened and intimidated” and speaking to her in a “threatening tone."

Last week about two dozen staff members from School 6 met with union leadership to discuss objections with the way the new principal, Shonda Davis, and her deputies treat teachers, and a parent who used to be a secretary in the school’s parent organization said she resigned over frustrations with the new management.

Superintendent Donnie Evans hired Davis from Newark’s Barringer High School last summer in an attempt to boost student achievement at School 6, which is in danger of being taken over by the state if test scores do not rise.

Evans allowed Davis to bring along two vice principals from Barringer - Bennett and Jasonn Denard -- and he set salaries for all three higher than their counterparts at any other school in Paterson.

“They don’t know how to talk to parents,” said Cora Dunbar, whose six-year-old son attends the school. A former secretary in the parents’ organization, Dunbar said she stepped down because of what she described as the new administrator’s demeaning attitude. Four months ago, Dunbar had attended Davis’ get-acquainted community meeting and said at that time that she was hopeful the new principal would bring improvement.

In response to an inquiry about complaints by parents and staff, Evans issued a brief statement. “School 6 is our lowest performing school in the district,” he said. “As a result, we have hired a high performing team to transform this school, and it is to be expected that some people will not immediately embrace the changes being made.”

Evans expressed confidence in the School 6 administrators, but said the district would attempt to resolve legitimate complaints.

Assistant Superintendent Aubrey Johnson had already met with one parent who had complaints, and Johnson and school leaders spoke with a union representative “to ensure that specific concerns of the union were also being addressed,” said district spokeswoman Terry Corallo.

Neither Davis nor Bennett responded to messages left at School 6 seeking comment. McMillan, who has been a teacher in Paterson for more than eight years, was not at the school on Tuesday, according to a staff member who answered the phone.

School 6 has had four different principals in the past three years. It is located on Carroll Street in a 4th Ward neighborhood that has Paterson’s highest concentration of shootings and suffers from poverty and unemployment rates that are worse than the city’s already low averages.

In her meeting with the community in September, Davis had talked about her experience in Newark at a school that faced similar obstacles. Her resume touts the improvements in student test scores during her stewardship of Barringer.

A Paterson Press review of the scores of Newark’s other troubled high schools, including Shabazz and West Side, show they had made similar gains as those registered at Barringer under Davis.

Peter Tirri, head of the Paterson Education Association, the union representing teachers, said the biggest problem at School 6 has been the instability brought about by frequent changes in principals and staff.

“There’s been no opportunity to approach things as a community at that school,” the union president said.

Tirri said teachers’ primary complaint was that the new administrators disregarded them. “I heard that one administrator said that 85 percent of the staff shouldn’t be in teaching,” he said. “They’ve been there three months. What do they know?”

McMillan’s harassment complaint against Bennett does not describe details of the incident, other than to state that the vice principal leaned over her desk and into the teacher’s “personal space,” which she said caused her to feel “threatened and intimidated.”